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I attended the Emergency Event at the London School of Economics which was publicised by Perry earlier this week entitled "Freedom of Speech: Who cares what Muslims think". There was a very small but vocal contingent of Samizdata supporters, agreeing with Claire Fox's defence of the freedom of speech. The excellent chairman of the debate between Claire Fox and Sajjid Khan was fair and impartial.

Many of the Muslims who commented during the debate stated their pain at the publication of the cartoons. It was clear that, despite the long period in time from the initial publication of the cartoons to the demonstrations, Muslims argued that this was a trespass upon the sacred. It was hard to gauge whether this reaction stemmed from belief or obligation, as the orthodox approach to the cartoons had now been established.

Whilst Claire Fox located recent infringements and restrictions on free speech in the developments of left-wing politics from the 1970s, especially political correction and speech codes, Sajjid Khan said that there was a sphere of the sacred surrounding Mohammed. No person should ridicule, publish or draw Mohammed. In the first instance, non-Muslims should practice self-censorship in this regard, but the preferred tool for policing the sacred sphere was the law. He stated that respect for Islam would join other shared goals such as social justice and taking my money to care for the poor. Khan criticised Blair but he was quite clear that he did not want to change the system itself, only those who pulled the levers, so that respect for Islam would become a legitimate objective of a democratic society.

Claire Fox argued that it was possible to hold a dialogue between Muslims and those whose default position supported liberty. This was not true in the debate. Our values are incommensurable as many Muslims clearly support using the law, if changed, to coerce my freedom of expression. The law would be used to prevent me from freely expressing myself on the subject of Mohammed, if I chose to do so, and rights of trespass on the sacred space would surely be decided by Muslims themselves, not by me.

It is a depressing conclusion, since I had hoped that there could be common ground here on shared notions of liberty. That will not stop me trying, since this is one of the most important issues that we face. What matters is how individuals, whether Muslim or non-Muslim act, not those who would speak for or bind us all into simplified collectives called Islam or the West.

UPDATE

Adloyada argues that Sajjid Khan is, in fact, a member of Hizb ut Tahrir and presents compelling evidence.

Sajjad Khan, a prominent member of Hizb who runs classes on the group's ideology and has delivered speeches at the group's congresses, said: 'Most of our members are graduates who work and pay taxes. Very few of them are unemployed or rely on state benefits.' A finance and IT specialist, he said he had worked for a number of large companies, including Tesco.

Khan certainly did not declare this affiliation.

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This looks like it could be interesting!

London School of Economics
6pm Friday 17th February 2006
Room D702

Head-to-Head
"Freedom of speech: Who cares what Muslims think?"
Sajjad Khan vs. Claire Fox

Sajjad Khan
Editor of New Civilisation Magazine - A quarterly publication providing a unique perspective on Islamic political thinking to the western world, initiated as a unique forum to debate and discuss issues relating to Islamic political discourse seeking to do away with the tired labels of fundamentalist or moderate and instead engage with people holding a concerted rational opinion on these matters from all shades of the political spectrum: left, right and centre.

vs.

Claire Fox
Director of The Institute of Ideas. Its mission is to expand the boundaries of public debate. It is committed to scientific and social experimentation, intellectual ambition and curiosity. Embracing change and making history. Art for art's sake, knowledge for its own sake, and education as an end in itself. Freedom. To think, to act, to say what needs saying - even if it offends others. Challenging irrational social panics. Open and robust debate, in which ideas can be interrogated, argued for and fought over. Civil liberties, with no ifs or buts.

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If you are free tomorrow evening and wish to sing carols in aid of Iraqi children and enjoy a spontaneous demonstration of faith, hope, joy and/or religious tolerance in defiance of Section 132 of the Serious and Organised Crimes and Police Act 2005, please check out Bloggerheads.

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Like Brian Micklethwait, I have been at the annual conference of the Libertarian Alliance , held at the National Liberal Club, a glorious Victorian building erected at a time when Britain's ruling Liberal Party (formerly the Whigs) was genuinely liberal in the classical sense of that word. Among the topics to fuel the mind: libertarian approaches to the environment, a debate about whether limited-liability companies were a good thing; the contribution to libertarian thought of Ayn Rand and reflections on private enterprise and defence. An excellent collection of subjects.

As some regular readers will know, the founder and director of the L.A., Chris R. Tame, has been fighting cancer and made a great effort to be present throughout the entire conference. Anyone who knows and admires this clever, generous and tenacious man will not be surprised at his determination not only to set up this conference but also to set in train plans for future events. He received a surprise award celebrating his achievements on Saturday night's banquet, and no-one deserved it more. Without Chris, it is probable that Britain's present libertarian movement would not exist, and I don't think I am writing out of turn in doubting whether Samizdata would be quite what it is now, either.

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I have just spent the day at Liberty 2005, the Libertarian Alliance run conference being held over this weekend at the magnificent National Liberal Club. As well as listening attentively, I snapped photos.

Here is speaker number three today, Syed Kamall MEP, in action:

And here is Gabriel Calzada who will be first up tomorrow morning:

Syed was most impressive, and I am confident Gabriel will be too. No time to elaborate now on what is actually being said at this gathering, but I hope I will manage to later.

These two pictures, and another eighteen, at my place.

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As already reported here, there are two conferences of possible interest to Samizdata readers this coming weekend, Novermber 19th-20th, in London.

There is this one about the theory and practice of Rational Selfishness. And (as already reported here) there is the one I will rationally and selfishly be attending myself: Liberty 2005: The Annual London Conference of the Libertarian Alliance and the Libertarian International.

The reason that I mention this latter gathering in particular today is that now is just about the last moment for booking yourself in to the banquet on the Saturday night. Sean Gabb needs to know by Wednesday at the very latest (so best to make that this evening) so that the National Liberal Club (a fantastic, must see before you die building, by the way) can be told the number of guests to cater for. If past versions of it are anything at all to go by, this banquet will be an excellent occasion, and a splendid opportunity to socialise with libertarians from all over the planet, so if you want to be there, email Sean Gabb now.

Turning up on the day on the day to hear all the speakers, waving banknotes, is okay, and you will be made very welcome if you do that. But for the banquet, if you have not already booked, it is now or never.

Sean tells me that the Conference is already sure to break even, but the more the merrier. It is a big place, as well as a great looking one.

By the way, unless I am much mistaken, the relevant stretch of the Circle and District Underground line will not be in action (see para 5) over this weekend. Watch out for that.

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We may be wandering through a vast desert of stupidity, monstrosity and petty tyranny but never forget that there are some oases of sanity still to be found.

One of them will blossom into life next month when the Libertarian Alliance Conference opens in London. True to tradition, the Conference features an impressive array of brilliant speakers who will deliver their pearls of wisdom to an audience of the enlightened. It is bound to be a uplifting experience.

Book now and book with gusto. Your salvation may depend on it.

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At last! A how-to seminar for friends of freedom and limited government: the Cato Institute's October 20-23 seminar on "How to Win Arguments, Win Allies, and Win Friends".

A free republic rests on an informed citizenry, but more important, it rests on a citizenry willing to resort to persuasion rather than force. And for freedom to persist, freedom's advocates must acquire the skills of advocacy.

October's Cato University is a weekend long intellectual feast where you can make new friends, renew your commitment to freedom, and hone your skills as an exponent for liberty.

Speakers include Reason's Nick Gillespie, the Objectivist Center's David Kelley, Don Boudreaux of George Mason University, the Cato Institute's David Boaz, Gene Healy, and Tom Palmer, among others.

Sessions will be held in the F. A. Hayek Auditorium of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., as well as at the historic home of George and Martha Washington, Mount Vernon, just across the river from Washington in Alexandria.

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Samizdata editor Adriana is going to be in New York and is looking for hook up with some of the Big Apple's blognoscenti for a 'geek dinner' along the lines of previous successful geekfests.

Does that sound interesting to you? Well then take a look at this wiki which has just been set up and invite yourself!

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I attended the GI launch last night, and Alex Singleton turned me loose as the kind of semi-official photographer of the event, and has used some crowd shots I took, and also pictures I did of Bill Emmott and Alan Beattie (who is also quoted here).

Glad to be of use. But what really got my attention last night was the number of nice looking women who were present. Johnathan Pearce is fond of mentioning P. J. O'Rourke's Law of Babes, or whatever it is called, which goes something like: Wheresoever the Babes are, there shall also the Action be. Tom Wolfe's description of how the Babes managed to track down the men test flying jets in the top secret desert of western USA in the early 1950s, in The Right Stuff, is an earlier exposition of the same law.

Judged by this standard, the GI Institute is doing pretty well. Here are eight nice looking ladies, and one genuine baby type babe just for good luck, and because he/she was there. (Cranking out more of those being a lot of what this is all about, after all.)

   

   

   

   

And those are only the ones I got reasonably good photos of. I can recall at least two more ladies who only missed the cut because I did not get good photos of them. So if you are a fully certified Gorgeous Babe and you were there, please do not be offended. You just came out all blurry in all my photos, on account of my chin hanging down and hitting the focussing nob.

Click to get bigger pictures, some of which include extraneous males of the species. Cropping such photos is always a controversial matter.

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Today's reason for light blogging is that the Samizdata editors are in Paris(!) attending a blogging conference Les Blogs. Blogging is making some waves in France and this conference is truly international, bloggers from 20 countries are present. We have met many a blogger we have known virtually and putting faces to blogs is always an interesting experience.

For those who are interested in the blog trends and biz, head over to the Big Blog Company blog for some furious blogging of the conference.

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While driving down Virginia's crowded Route 28 this afternoon, I heard a radio spot from our good friends at UNICEF that almost caused me to drive right off the road. The announcer solemnly intoned that with your help, UNICEF would create "a tsunami of love, a tsunami of hope" for children affected by the Dec. 26th disaster in the east Indies.

A "tsunami of love?" Even if these people have their hearts in the right places, just how tone-deaf is this organization? Apart from the fact that "tsunami of love" sounds like it could be the title of a song by Def Leppard, who actually thought that this was clever? Somehow, I cannot imagine soldiers liberating the German death camps of WWII telling prisoners, "We are going to build you a concentration camp of compassion!" or Amnesty International offering "a gulag of love" to political prisoners.

UNICEF must have gotten complaints about this, because the downloadable version of the ad available on their website now says "a wave of love." Which isn't a huge improvement, actually.

Of course, that still is not as bad as this Seattle Times column, from Saturday which dismisses tsunami victims as "clutter" apparently worthy of a tsunami of scorn for deigning to develop beaches into tourist attractions.

(A tip o' the hat to Jesse Walker of Reason Online for the Seattle Times link.)

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Identity cards are a cause of much controversy here in the UK, and are especially hated by Samizdata writers. Next week, on Tuesday 18 January, there will be a roundtable discussion on identity cards, held at the Adam Smith Institute in London. Speakers will include Peter Lilley MP (former Secretary of State for Social Security), Sarah Arnott (journalist at the IT industry newspaper, Computing), Seamus Heffernan (Civitas) and others to be confirmed. The event will start at 6:15pm for 6:30pm, at 23 Great Smith Street, London SW1, and will be followed by a champagne reception. If you would like to reserve a place, please e-mail events@adamsmith.org.

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The Adam Smith Institute will be hosting an event called Democracy & the Blogosphere next Tuesday 16th November. The speakers will be Stephen Pollard, William Heath, Sandy Starr and yours truly.

The event is 'jacket and tie' at 6:15pm and will be followed by a reception at the ASI at 23 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BL

Anyone who would like to come along should send an e-mail for an invitation.

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The Adam Smith Institute is hosting an evening seminar on the subject of 'Democracy and the Blogosphere' on Tuesday 16 November in London. Speakers will include Samizdata.net's Perry de Havilland, New Labour journo Stephen Pollard, Spiked's Sandy Starr, and William Heath (chaiman of Kable, the publishers of Government Computing). There will be a champagne reception at the end of the formal proceedings - an opportunity to mingle with the great and the good of the British blogging world. But space is limited, so book early to avoid disappointment.

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Tonight I attended a very interesting event hosted by the Adam Smith Institute which commemorated the 25th anniversary of the abolition of exchange controls. Speaking at this dinner were Lord Howe and Lord Lawson, the people actually responsible for the action which set off a cascade of events not just in Britain but across the world. This in no small measure led to the second age of globalisation in which we live today. The third speaker, acting as the warm up act and comic relief, was yours truly.

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Last evening I enjoyed a pleasant evening chatting to old friends at a reception held at the Institute of Economic Affairs in honour of great Victorian author, Samuel Smiles. His most famous work, Self Help, became a best seller, not just in Britain but also around the world.

It is, in fact, probably the great grandaddy of self help books. Go into any bookshop today and you will see shelves crammed with books showing you how to get rich, be healthier, happier, deal with relationships, and so forth. In fact, the spread of liberal ideas will be limited unless people also take the opportunity to liberate their own potential. Reading Smiles is a reminder that there is more, much more to ideas than the pure political realm.

After a long period of neglect, I hope this great book will win back the respect it deserves.

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David Carr may have given up cigarettes but he still likes a good cigar.

Here he is, pictured at my place on Friday night, pondering the enigma wrapped in a mystery smothered in something else which I have forgotten that is Russia. This was the subject spoken about by Helen Szamuely (co-author of this blog – here is her latest, posted this morning).

Click on David if you want him to be bigger.

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Last night many Samizdatistas heading for Aldwych as the 2004 Big Brother Awards were held at the London School of Economics. The list of winners, who are in fact losers, can be found here1.

Simon Davies of Privacy International is the driving force behind the Big Brother Awards...

The stout lads from No2ID were out in force...

About 450 people turned up to heckle cheer...

This was probably the best propaganda shirt I saw!
The left has always been good at that sort of thing

1 = Update: The link to the Big Brother Award details has been changed, which is not very clever. Link updated to a somewhat less informative page.

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The annual London Gay Pride march took place earlier today.

Typically, I pay no heed to the occasion. This is partly due to the fact that I have no strong feelings about it one way or the other but also because it has now become just another piece in the cultural jigsaw of London life. A part of the social furniture really.

However, now into my 3rd year as a blogger, I find that I have a heightened sense of curiosity so I wandered over to have a look at the promotional website.

I rather regret bothering to do so as it makes excrutiating reading. Apparently as much devoted to disabled and asylum-seeker 'rights' as homosexual ones, every page drips with exquisitely pitched right-on-ness. In fact such is the extent of the dogmatically po-faced sincerity that some of it is unintentionally hilarious. For example, the line up of guest speakers includes:

Ida Barr, artificial hip hop from Music Hall Veteran and Rally Compere.

Now that means that Ms Barr plays hip hop music that is not genuine or does it mean that she merely hops around on an artificial hip? If the latter, then that is not what I call entertainment.

Julie Felix, singing against inequality, injustice and war for the last 40 years.

Clearly the number one choice when you really need to get the party swinging.

Wesley Gryk, Solicitor for the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group Gay Asylum seeker.

If I made up a group called 'Gay Asylum seeker' (and I consider myself somewhat remiss for not having done so) then not only would I not be believed but I would also be pilloried for exaggeration and hate speech.

There is no mention anywhere of any stop-the-war or anti-globo ranters but given their leech-like ability to latch themselves onto any passing warm-blooded creatures it would not surprise me in the least to find out that a whole sackload of them had tagged along for the ride as well.

There is nothing here about pride, much less freedom of association or individual sovereignty. This is all about group-think and the fostering of grievance cultures. What was once an understandable public protest against unjustifiable persecution has become a portmanteau of victimologies. It is as if the organisers are seeking to stitch together some coalition of alleged unfortunates with the thread of an earnestly cultivated sense of self-pity.

There was a time (and not all that long ago either) when homosexual men in this country were unfairly treated by the state so I fail to understand what is so attractive about revelling in an alleged pariah status that is demonstrably no longer the case. If homosexuals who are inclined to buy into this sophistry could learn to chuck it off and just live their lives, then that really would be a liberation.

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One reason for the limited output of bloggage from some of us tonight was that several of us went to an extremely well attended party. This was hosted by the Adam Smith Institute in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the start of the Thatcher Revolution. The event at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London.

It is easy today to look back and scoff at what went wrong in those days, but those of us who lived through the steady economic and social collapse wrought by the likes of Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, I have no hesitation describing what Thatcher presided over, which was nothing less than turning the tide of socialism, as a glorious revolution.

We are older and wiser now and all too aware of the missed opportunities and wrong turns of that era, but credit where credit is due. The future could have been very much darker indeed without Margaret Thatcher.

Update: More pictures on the Adam Smith Institute blog

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I am in my kitchen, reporting on one of my last-Friday-of-the-month meetings. It is still in full swing. Most of the London events you read about on Samizdata are booze-ups at Perry's, and at my meetings, there is also booze. From 9.30 pm until around midnight the drink flows and the conversation bubbles merrily, and I can hear it bubbling now. But there is also, always, an agenda. Starting at 8 pm, and proceeding until 9.30 pm, there is a speaker lead discussion.

I have been hosting these things since the late 1980s, and there a moment, a few years back, when I was finding them something of a drag to organise. Only the enormous inconvenience that would necessarily have continued, every last Friday of the month, even if I had stopped holding these meetings, in the form of regulars knocking on my door and demanding entry to a non-existent event and then having to be diverted (which might not be much fun) or told to go away (which might not be wise or kind), persuaded me to persist with these events. But then along came email, to the point where even I had it, and now they pretty much run themselves. I fix a speaker, email everyone on the list on about the Tuesday telling them of exactly who will say approximately what on the Friday, and of any other future meetings that have already been fixed. (Speakers for July and November are now settled, but nothing else is certain as yet, other than that someone will speak.)

Tonight, Sean Gabb spoke about "Demography and History". He is the second from the right in the picture, with our own David Carr lending an ear in the foreground. The guy in the corner is Bruce, a real photographer, who would have done a far better picture, but with him as with me, you get what you pay for, photographically speaking.

When Sean speaks about current affairs, he is always interesting, but so are most of us. We all have worthwhile opinions about what is happening now. But when it comes to speaking about the whys and wherefores of the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in the Sixth Century or for that matter about the history of Eastern Europe in the years before the outbreak of the First World War, Sean is, in the London libertarian scene, in a class of his own. Not being burdened with false modesty, Sean was recording his talk, on his laptop computer, and I understand that it will be available on the Internet. He had to leave promptly at 9.30 pm to catch his train down to the South Coast where he now lives, so I can not be sure of the details of this, but I will supply a link to his talk as soon as I can, and maybe some more comment on it.

The most interesting thing I learned this evening was the existence of an entire class of historical event such as I had never previous known existed. I refer to the plague induced toppling of a culturally distinct poltical elite. The Eastern Roman empire was presided over by a Greek speaking elite. Every city and town of the Empire was run by this tiny handful of Greek speakers. But the plagues of the 540s and onwards destroyed the influence of these elites. Whereas they had previously sustained themselves by recruiting a constant flow of new recruits from among the ranks of the upwardly mobile barbarians, the plague put a stop to that. Suddenly, there were no Greek teachers to train up these new recruits. The elites were both halved in size, and unable to replenish their ranks. Thus the Greek Empire disintegrated. I think I have that about right. (By the way, many moons ago I posted here a rather fanciful speculation about what caused these plagues.)

I feel no great shame at not knowing this stuff about the Eastern Roman Empire, but just before Sean had to leave to catch his train, I had the extreme good fortune to ask about another famous plague, namely the Black Death, the great mid-fourteenth-century plague that killed about a third of the population of Europe, including about a third of the population of England. And it turned out that something rather similar happened here. The "Empire" didn't collapse, exactly, but the English elite, as a result of the Black Death, abruptly ceased to speak French, and switched to English. The same cultural conveyor belt that had suddenly stopped working throughout the Eastern Roman Empire, did the same in England. Again, I think I have that about right, and what I want to say here is: (a) I never knew that, and (b) how extremely interesting. I have read quite a lot about the economic, and hence political, impact of the Black Death on England, in terms of the relative power of the elites and the masses. But I never knew that about the elite talking French, and then suddenly stopping.

As he said himself, Sean did not say much that was distinctively libertarian, distinctively pro-liberty. He concentrated on how an understanding of population trends illuminates our understanding of history. But on the other hand, nor did he say anything un-libertarian. I was a little nervous that the title, including as it did the word "Demography", might entice here all manner of political creepy-crawlies, but I only spotted one, and he was not actually that bad, although that may have been because he was so heavily outnumbered.

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I have been to a marvelous party and now I am back.

The marvelous party was the CNE Capitalist Ball, held at the Belgian Stock Exchange in central Brussels.

Now before I go any further here, I have a confession to make. Two confessions, in fact. Last Thursday, I referred to Brussels as the 'Heart of Darkness'. Well, I was wrong about that. I also suspected that I was going to find myself in Brussels amid a room full of musty, fusty academics plus a few corporate types and policy wonks. I was wrong about that too.

In fact, my travelling companion and fellow Samizdatista Antoine Clarke and I found ourselves in sumptuous surroundings with hundreds of European, British and American glitterati and illuminati from the worlds of business, finance, politics, journalism and academia. In other words, lots of clever, interesting men and lots of clever, interesting and head-turningly lovely women. They were smart, young, chic, funny and sexy.

The belles are ringing for capitalism

Imagine how much fun you could have with those kind of people mixed with lashings of the finest food, alcohol and tobacco that money can buy and a sixteen-piece swing band? Well, it was even more fun than that. If you don't believe me then see the pictures below.

But the pictures can only convey a part of the whole. What they cannot really convey is the atmosphere. Yes, it was sexy but it was something more than sexy too. It was mingled with that kind of giddy excitement that comes from being in the company of winners.

That is the impression I am left with. These clever, dynamic people are in the process of straightening out an entire continent and I cannot imagine any obstacle being enough to deter them or get in their way for long enough to even slow them down. If history possesses even a modicum of common sense then it will get on their side. Quickly.

I want to go again. In fact, I want to go again right now. Sadly, I am going to have to wait another year.

I will let you go to the photo-fest now but, before you rush off, I just want to say a few words about my hosts, the Centre for New Europe. Not only did they organise this weekends event (and for that alone they would deserve global plaudits) but it is the CNE that is networking all these brilliant free-market campaigners, writers, doers and thinkers and bringing into together so that they get to know each other and trade their ideas and strategies. That is real progress. Bloggers like me may talk a lot about changing things but the crew at the CNE are out there actually changing things.

No-one, least of all me, is going to even try to pretend that Europe does not have its serious and structural problems but if that continent is going to be saved at all from terminal and ruinous decline, then it is the CNE that is most likely to save it.

A couple of interns

A terrific French band playing American swing music in front of a
New York skyline backdrop! French anti-Americanism? Pah!

Tall, glamourous Texan woman with short, drunk, unglamourous British man

Gawain Towler (editor of The Sprout) and his wife Joslin

Stephen Pollard and friend.

Plenty of bright, young things in attendance

A very charming Phd student from California

And now for a few words about Brussels. I was unjustified in referring to it as the 'Heart of Darkness' but not entirely off the mark. Anywhere that hosts the European Commission and a clutch of similar toxic bureaucratic monoliths deserves a bit of a battering. But there is more to Brussels than that.

The Grand Platz of Brussels

Away from the soulless, modernist horror blocks are towering and inspirational monuments to the old Flemish mercantile traditions upon which the city was built. It is still a very prosperous place. Walking around the city centre, I lost count of the number and choice of high-quality retail outlets, restaurants, cafes and bars. There is also a bustling, commercial quality to the atmosphere that gives Brussels quite a buzz.

Of course, two days is nowhere near long enough to get an accurate impression of what it would be like to live in a place. But it is long enough to dispel this caricature notion of Europe being a socialist hell-hole as compared to the English-speaking world. If only thing were that cut and dried. They are not. Certainly we do some things better in Britain but there are also very many areas in which I think the Belgians are doing things better than we are. I hope we can learn the good things from each other and I hope to be taking another trip to Brussels quite soon.

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Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist gave a lecture this evening (this was posted after midnight but still that same evening - ed) at the Adam Smith Institute in London. A number of the Samizdatistas were there. Lomborg's arguments are familiar to those who have read his book, but it was a rapid, powerful, to the point speech in which he demolished many of the arguments of the "The world is facing impending environmental collapse" school of Greenery with ruthless efficiency. His ten minute demolition of the case for the Kyoto accord was particularly impressive.

Lomborg walked on stage wearing a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, and looked just like the thirtysomething Greenpeace member and quintissential Nordic person of more traditional environmentalist views he once apparently was. He spoke with a rapid intensity, clearly wanted to get a lot out in the relatively short time he had for the lecture. And perhaps the rapidity of speech was covering up a certain natural shyness, but if so this was mixed in with what was clearly a burning desire to get his message out.

Lomborg told the familiar story of how he found himself in this position.

In 1997 he found an article in Wired magazine profiling the American economist Julian Simon, who argued that in most ways the Earth's environment was improving and not (as conventional wisdon suggested) getting worse. It explained that Simon had studied a great many environmental trends, and observed that in most instances things were getting better and not worse. Pollution was a much less serious problem than was the case 100 years ago, for instance. While we were using mineral resources, our technological abilities to extract the same resources were advancing at a faster rate than our resource use, so that the level of untapped resources available to us was increasing, rather than us running out. And many other similar things.

Oddly enough, I read the same article myself in 1997, and it helped me to clarify these kinds of issues in my mind too. My response was to buy and read some of Simon's books, particularly his impressively researched and argued The State of Humanity, which addressed many of the most important trends in great detail.

Whereas I merely used the article to clarify my own views, Lomborg went further. He initially thought that Simon's work was "right wing crap" but was sufficiently moved by it to make an honest attempt to disprove it. As it happened, though, the opposite happened, and he ended up becoming a convert instead. Simon was in most instances right. Lomborg set his students on the problem, studying monumental amounts of environmental data and ending up with broadly the same conclusions himself. Environmental trends were generally positive. And having done this, Lomborg felt the need to tell the whole world, so he wrote his own book, covering many of the same issues as Simon's earlier works, but more up to date and covering even more ground.

Lomborg has been attacked by many people since then. The perception that the world is going to hell in a handbasket is widespread in people's minds and in the media, and this perception is very hard to shake, regardless of how well you argue the point. Lomborg has been criticised, mocked, physically attacked, denounced by the slightly Orwellian sounding "Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty" (in a decision later overturned by a higher Danish authority) and more, but what his opponents have singularly failed to do is to engage him in any kind of serious argument. In many cases he has simply been treated as being beyond the pale, which has of course simply meant that his opponents have then felt no need to argue with him.

Which in a way is curious, because what Lomborg argues is actually extremely moderate. For one thing, he only uses data from widely accepted sources, often the UN and generally the same data used by environmentalists themselves. He does not argue that there are no environmental problems and that we should rape and pillage the environment with impunity, but instead argues simply that we should apply intelligent cost and benefit analysis before spending money on environmental issues. We should not assume that technology will remain static. It will continue to improve, and our ability to solve environmental policies, and to find and exploit resources, will improve with this.

Much environmental policy is based on the idea that (as Lomborg puts it) there is a metaphorical gun to our heads. The environmental situation is perceived as being so bad that we must do anything and everything that we possibly can immediately and that this is too important to even think about the costs of our actions before doing them. This would be fine if we had an infitite amount of money, but we do not. If we spend them in one place, we then don't have them to spend somewhere else. Like with almost anything else, our resources are finite and we shoud spend them where spening them will do the most good.

The aforementioned arguments on Kyoto are of this form. Lomborg does not attempt to argue that global warming is not real, or that it is not caused by mankind's carbon emissions. However, rather than going from there to assuming worst case scenarios, he then looks at the foundation of those worst case scenarios. These are based on the assumption that we will continue to use fossil fuels for almost all our energy needs. However, this is not likely, as technology is evolving. Relatively modest technological improvements in the efficiency and cost of other energy sources (principally solar cells) will ultimately lead to substitution and the result will be a worst case increase in temperature of perhaps 2 degrees Celcius (before temperature begins to decline again) rather than the five to ten degree increase that comes from cruder assumptions, and which is often quoted. The net effects of this on humanity will be moderate, as there will be benefits of increased temperatures in temperate parts of the world as well as negatives in hotter parts of the world. And the effects of these negatives on agricultural production for instance are likely to be small compared with dramatically improved agricultural production due to better agricultural technology.

As a response to this, the Kyoto Protocol is incredibly expensive in the short term, but relatively ineffective. Rather than prevent global warming, all it is likely to do is to delay what global warming will occur slightly rather than prevent it. And very slightly. By 2100, all that will be achieved is to delay global warming by six years.

If Kyoto was completely implemented, the costs of this in the short term will be around $150bn to $350bn per year. For one year of this, we could provide clean drinking water for everyone in the world, which would save millions of lives per year. Then we could solve another problem the next year, and another the next. For instance, we could instead spend the money on better research into renewable energy sources. A relatively small increase in such spending would likely reduce global warming in the long run by far more than the simple cut in energy consumption dictated by Kyoto. The point is that our technology level is not stable. Technology improves, and this dramatically improves our ability to deal with environmental issues. And before we do such a thing as implement Kyoto, we should at least consider these issues. What are the costs? What are the benefits? How much does each likely life saved cost? Is it possible to save lives somewhere else more cheaply? Rather than panic, this sort of analysis is surely necessary.

But ultimately this is not the place to exhaustively discuss Lomborg's arguments directly. If you haven't read his book, do so. The point is simply that Lomborg is arguing that this kind of cost and benefit analysis argument is necessary to best solve our environmental problems. Sound economic analysis should be applied to environmental policy, as it should be applied to many other things. When you do this, even with the possibly pessimistic data provided by environmentalists, handling our environmental problems appears well within our capabilities.

As Lomborg explained in the question and answer session after the lecture, his opponents have singularly failed to address what he as said on its merits. The report of the 'Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty' simply declared him to be guilty, without providng any reasons. Nobody has been willing at all to go through his arguments point by point and attempt to refute them, either because they know they can not, or because they are already so certain of their sense of environmental doom and gloom that they consider it unnecessary to try. In short, none of his opponents have been willing to attempt to do to Lomborg what he himself attempted to do to the arguments of Julian Simon. They do at least owe him that, although they do not seem to realise this at all.

Lomborg seemed actually quite encouraged by this. He was asked whether he thought he could win the argument, and he said that he thought that the shrill quality of his opponents, and their unwillingness to argue facts was beginning to show. I hope he is right. Certainly he has been more successful than Julian Simon ever was at getting his argument out. And when you see him, you can tell why. Lomborg is not a 'scary right wing American', but has precisely the quality of sincerity and genuine concern that a lot of his opponents like to believe that they have a monopoly on. And this, more than anything is why I think they find him so threatening.